Sunday, September 19, 2010

Sunday Press Spotlight: Unversity of North Texas Press

The University of North Texas Press has been publishing since 1989. Their websites states, "Though we are the newest university press in North Texas (following SMU Press and TCU Press), we have quickly become a leading press with the most titles in print (more than 300) and published (15 to 16 each year). We are fully accredited members of the Association of American University Presses. Our books are distributed and marketed nationally and internationally through the Texas A and M University Press Consortium."

El Charro , or man on horseback, has represented the spirit of independent Mexico since he played an important role in the 1821 revolution. He is the Mexican version of the American cowboy, only much older, arising from the ranch culture first brought to Mexico by the Spanish.

The Charreada is his rodeo, his opportunity to show off both his skills with rope and horse and his decorative, elegant costume. It is at the center of Mexican heritage and self-image, a source of mythology and genuine heroes that has been brought to Texas by immigrants. And since 1989, it has included women, charras, who participate in elaborate and difficult riding formations.

San Antonio photographer Al Rendon has taken this ideal subject for the camera and created a collection of splendid sepia photographs reproduced in duotone. The photos juxtapose the grit of the arena with the poise and polish of the charros, charras, and their horses.

The essays, by Julia Hambric, Bryan Woolley, and F. E. Abernethy, describe the history of the charreada and its roots in Mexican culture. Hambric’s essay also details the costumes and events prescribed by tradition and the Federacion Nacional de Charro. Together, this is a unique examination of an important part of Mexico’s heritage.

Education is one of the most contentious and misunderstood educational programs in the country. It raises significant questions about this country’s national identity, the nature of federalism, power, ethnicity, and pedagogy. In Contested Policy , Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., studies the origins, evolution, and consequences of federal bilingual education policy from 1960 to 2001, with particular attention to the activist years after 1978, when bilingual policy was heatedly contested.

Traditionally, those in favor of bilingual education are language specialists, Mexican American activists, newly enfranchised civil rights advocates, language minorities, intellectuals, teachers, and students. They are ideologically opposed to the assimilationist philosophy in the schools, to the structural exclusion and institutional discrimination of minority groups, and to limited school reform.

On the other hand, the opponents of bilingual education, comprised at different points in time of conservative journalists, politicians, federal bureaucrats, Anglo parent groups, school officials, administrators, and special-interest groups (such as U.S. English), favor assimilationism, the structural exclusion and discrimination of ethnic minorities, and limited school reform.

In the 1990s a resurgence of opposition to bilingual education succeeded in repealing bilingual legislation with an English-only piece of legislation. San Miguel deftly provides a history of these clashing groups and how they impacted bilingual educational policy over the years. Rounding out this history is an extensive, annotated bibliography on federal bilingual policy that can be used to enhance further study.

“In this book Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., provides important insights into the bilingual education debate at the federal level. This is a must read for anyone interested in understanding one of the most contentious and misunderstood educational policy issues in the United States.”–Rubén Donato, School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder

In the early 1870s, Hubert H. Bancroft and his assistants set out to record the memoirs of early Californios, one of them being eighty-three-year-old Don José María Amador, a former “Forty-Niner” during the California Gold Rush and soldado de cuera at the Presidio of San Francisco.

Amador tells of reconnoitering expeditions into the interior of California, where he encountered local indigenous populations. He speaks of political events of Mexican California and the widespread confiscation of the Californios’ goods, livestock, and properties when the United States took control.

A friend from Mission Santa Cruz, Lorenzo Asisara, also describes the harsh life and mistreatment the Indians faced from the priests.

Both the Amador and Asisara narratives were used as sources in Bancroft’s writing but never published themselves. Gregorio Mora-Torres has now rescued them from obscurity and presents their voices in English translation (with annotations) and in the original Spanish on facing pages. This bilingual edition will be of great interest to historians of the West, California, and Mexican American studies.

“This book presents a very convincing and interesting narrative about Mexican California. Its frankness and honesty are refreshing.”–Richard Griswold del Castillo, San Diego State University

Rolando Hinojosa is a Texas writer with his sense of place centered in the Texas Valley, a world in itself and a place recognizable as a discrete community. But Hinojosa’s work transcends the regional, transcends the Valley, transcends Texas, while it remains rooted in all three.

Hinojosa is treated here from the perspective of his place in the mainstream of American literature and with his attempts to write works that speak to a large and more diverse audience, rather than from the perspective of his place within the world of Texas-Mexican literature.

Joyce Lee does not neglect the regional aspects of Hinojosa's works, but puts them into the context of what they say about the vitality of American culture at large and about the Mexican culture's variations of the American Dream.

Covers Hinojosa's full-length books— Dear Rafe, Klail City, The Useless Servants, The Valley, Partners in Crime, and Rites and Witnesses —as well as his essays and articles.

Association of College and Research Libraries, Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 1997 *

Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes’ early experiences impacted his writing during his later years as an academic.

He grew up between two worlds–one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. He attended a school system that emphasized conformity and Anglo values in a town whose population was 70 percent Mexican in origin.

During World War II, he worked for the International American Red Cross and wrote for the Stars and Stripes army newspaper in the Far East. He returned to Texas with a new bride and a passion for continuing his formal education and his writing.

Paredes did both at the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie, among others.

For the next forty years he was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history.

He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. He was a co-founder in 1970 of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its wider acceptance today among transnationalist scholars.

He received numerous awards, including La Orden del Aguila Azteca, Mexico’s most prestigious service award to a foreigner. Paredes became a scholar of scholars, guiding many students to become academic leaders.

Manuel F. Medrano interviewed Paredes over a five-year period before Paredes’ death in 1999, and also interviewed his family and colleagues. For many Mexican Americans, Paredes’ historical legacy is that he raised, carried, and defended their cultural flag with a dignity that both friends and foes respected.

". . .the author has captured the sound, feel, and presumably the mind of the Nahuas, as drawn from codices and Spanish and beautifully rendered into English." –T. R. Fehrenbach

When Hernán Cortés and his explorers and their horses encountered the Aztecs under Moctezuma the violent collision of two worlds occurred: one mysteriously bound by the prophecy of the return of Quetzalcóatl and the other on a grand adventure without equal. This translation, written and illustrated by a former president of Mexico, takes the side of the Indian and through dramatic historical narrative, which displays the flavor of Mexico as it actually was in 1519, reveals the Indians' history of the Conquest. Through the author's clever justaposition of Cortés and Moctezuma and the love story of Marina and her Captain-General, we know more about how this strange land was conq

Behind the Walls is a detailed description of one of the world's largest prison systems by a long-time convict trained as an observer and reporter. It spotlights the day-to-day workings of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-what's good, what's bad, which programs work and which ones do not, and examines if practice really follows official policy.

Written to inform about the processes, services, activities, issues, and problems of being incarcerated, this book is invaluable to anyone who has a relative or friend incarcerated in Texas, or for those who want to understand how prisoners live, eat, work, play, and die in a contemporary U.S. prison.

Containing a short history of Texas prisons and advice on how to help inmates get out and stay out of prison, this book is the only one of its kind-written by a convict still incarcerated and dedicated to dispelling the ignorance and fear that shroud Texas prisons.

Renaud discusses living quarters, food, and clothing, along with how prisoners handle money, mail, visits, and phone calls. He explores the issues of drugs, racism, gangs, and violence as well as what an inmate can learn about his parole, custody levels, and how to handle emergencies. What opportunities are available for education? What is the official policy for discipline? What is a lockdown? These questions and many others are answered in this one-of-a-kind guide.

Who We Are

The Pluma Fronteriza newsletter was founded in 1999 to showcases Chicano(a) and Mexicano(a) writers from the El Paso-Las Cruces-Cd. Juarez region, the largest geographic niche in Chicano Literature.

Libros, Libros

PF later gave birth to Libros, Libros, the most up-to-date list of what is currently being published in Raza literature, inside and outside of El Paso, fiction and non-fiction. Libros, Libros not only lists new books, but gives you small descriptions, recent prize winners, and weblinks.

Pluma Fronteriza Blog

Although our blog is still dedicated to updating you on El Paso's writers, we found this would not give us enough juice for daily blog. So our blog is dedicated to updating you on what's new in Chicano Literature. We throw in bit about Latino writers occasionally. Although most of our focus is on Chicano(a) letters, we welcome news by Latino(a) writers as well. We published reviews, pensamientos, ramblings, interviews, chisme, chistes, and a lot more. We give you lists of NEW BOOKS every month, new books by both Chicanos and Latinos, or on Chicano, Latino, or Latin American topics.

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We accept book reviews, articles, or any of the above. Just contact us. We are currently seeking reviews to Chicano(a) titles published in 1980, 1990, and 2000. Reviews of new books are always accepted and either Chicano(a) or Latino(a) titles.